


I Bet All I Have on That Furrowed Brow

by FrenchTwistResistance



Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-06
Updated: 2019-05-18
Packaged: 2020-02-26 22:43:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18726343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrenchTwistResistance/pseuds/FrenchTwistResistance
Summary: Zelda has very specific ideas about who should be First Lady in the Church of Lilith.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Together-as-sisters tumblr prompt fill: Zelda wants Hilda to be her First Lady in the new Church of Lilith

Hilda, at first, chalks it up to the stress of the job.

She and Zelda have had their ups and downs, their rough patches, their intensely close periods, their ambivalent stretches, their antagonistic seasons, their confusingly and dizzyingly intimate moments that had gotten so close to something dire and delectable that they would always burn themselves into an even rougher rough patch without getting to the heart of the matter.

But now the new church is built, and Zelda is preparing for the ribbon cutting and planning a Beltane, and their current relationship trajectory does not exactly match any of its previous incarnations.

It had started off a classic intensely close period—a lot of encouragement and tenderness and edification, support and sorority in toto. In these times—and they’d had more of these statistically than any other—they read each other so well. Help each other succeed without asking what the other needs to do so. Re: the murder of Shirley Jackson most recently. But also Hilda would be remiss if she forgot the time Evangeline Fairchild had been poised to cheat her way to stealing Hilda’s title of Best Bubbler before an unfortunate and mysterious accident had rendered her unable to perform. Evangeline herself had been too embarrassed to elucidate upon the matter, but Zelda had smirked enough throughout the now fair competition that Hilda had known she’d had a hand in it.

But a few weeks out from the official opening of the church, Zelda begins delegating. Not officially or officiously, but verbally nonetheless, and Hilda wonders at this because hasn’t she already been doing everything Zelda wanted without explicit direction? 

She has, she assures herself. She’s been feeding and healing and clothing and housing all these orphaned witches; she’s been arguing with contractors; she’s been starting awake in the middle of the night to tell Zelda a new thought she’s had about the pros and cons of snap-together hardwood flooring; she’s been signing things; she’s been massaging Zelda’s scalp. And as always in times of intense closeness like this—like when Zelda nursed her through a brain fever in 1897—there has been praise and soft looks and absolute thankfulness that the other is there and alive and well. 

And now here Zelda is, telling her to do things. But not telling her telling her. Not commanding her. Rather. Politely asking her.

“Could you please go to the bank today?”

“I’d very much appreciate if you could take care of the O’Brien corpse.”

They’re small tasks but tasks that only she or Zelda can do, legally. Tasks Hilda probably would’ve done without being asked. Hilda chalks it up to the stress of the job as High Priestess that Zelda feels the need to itemize her needs in such a way—it’s probably good practice to be so precise and communicative. Nevertheless it feels different to Hilda—and really kind of good—to be asked, and she does them, follows Zelda’s lead and asks for more of them.

It’s a week before the ribbon cutting, and Hilda is knitting in bed. She doesn’t want the escapism of a trashy novel: she wants instead the muscle memory, the near-unconscious but constructive action of her hands so she can allow her mind to cycle through ideas she’s mulling over and steps to complete activities she has yet to accomplish. 

Zelda pauses at their doorjamb for a moment before she enters proper. She clears her throat there, and Hilda looks up at her. Their eyes meet. Zelda says,

“I’d like to speak with you about something.”

Hilda says,

“Let me just finish this row.” 

Zelda nods, says,

“I’ll undress in the interim.”

Hilda finishes the row and carefully places the nascent poncho into her craft basket, deposits her glasses into their case on her nightstand, resettles herself in bed long before Zelda emerges bare-faced in a conservative nightgown from the bathroom. 

It has given her too much time to contemplate what “I’d like to speak with you” might mean. Zelda’s tone had been fond and a little tentative. Zelda has a bad poker face typically, but especially when Zelda doesn’t understand her own emotions, they’re more difficult to read. And even though Zelda has a bad poker face, she has a pretty good poker aura because she’s so accustomed to and willfully inoculated against her dear sister’s mind-reading capabilities. So Hilda has very little to go on other than context and syntax and body language, and if she lets herself, she can write essays on each with plenty of examples and references. She chooses to wait for Zelda instead of over-analyzing.

Zelda crosses the room and stands between their beds. She’s standing with her perfect, straight-backed posture, still-styled hair falling gracefully over a shoulder. But her hands are fidgeting in front of her, fingers sliding against each other, nails scraping non-existent dirt out from under the opposite hand’s nails, all the small movements so much larger against the anchored backdrop of the black silk covering her torso. She stills her hands by folding them together, and her posture straightens even more. Zelda says with her chin raised, her voice quiet but firm,

“I am the High Priestess of the Church of Lilith.”

Hilda swallows back the sarcastic reply she wants to give to that. She knows it’s more Zelda steeling herself for some admission and less the melodramatic show of pride and ridiculousness it comes off as. Hilda feels bad for her about that particular trait: Zelda can’t help but come off wrong a lot of the time because she’s just too pretty not to, Hilda thinks. A blessing and a curse, she supposes.

“And as such,” Zelda says as she closes her eyes and says more quickly, “I require an admirable and worthy First Lady.”

Hilda almost laughs at this display, but again it’s one of those things about Zelda, her dramatic penchant for gravitas, especially if it involves any kind of real or perceived martyrdom. And as she waits for Zelda to get on with it already, she stares at her—she is so rigidly and formally standing there with her eyes pressed tightly shut like a kid who takes hide and seek very seriously. 

She waits so long that she realizes this is not a dramatic pause but that Zelda wants her to say something. But she’s not sure what Zelda wants that something to be, and she certainly doesn’t have anything to say other than,

“Okay?” which she does actually accidentally say after such a long silence.

Zelda opens her eyes at this, and those eyes are both searching and blazing. She takes a few steps closer to Hilda’s bed, her hands now in fists at her sides.

They’re face to face now, and they’re staring at each other. Zelda breaks the eye contact by shaking her head and sighing. Zelda fixes her gaze on the scuff on the headboard to the left of Hilda’s head, says,

“You don’t understand what I mean.”

Hilda touches Zelda’s forearm gently, says,

“Hmm. No. But I watch television, love. A First Lady wears a lot of ostentatious hats and amens whenever it’s appropriate. Is that what you want me to be for you?”

Zelda’s gaze snaps from the headboard to Hilda.

“I need you to be more than that,” Zelda says. Hilda squeezes Zelda’s forearm, says,

“I can be whatever you need.”

And in an instant they’ve gone from an atypical iteration of intensely close to a confusingly and dizzyingly intimate moment that’s so close to something dire and delectable. They’ve been here before, in a similar bizarre bubble where they’re breathing at each other and glimpsing something in each other and being afraid of what the other’s glimpsing. They’ve always tacitly agreed to swerve away from it, sublimate and seethe separately rather than do something together they can’t undo, abruptly halt to avoid the inevitable crash. (But any drivers ed teacher worth his salt will tell you, if you’re in a skid, pump the brakes and turn into it as gently as possible.)

Zelda covers Hilda's hand on her forearm with her own hand and says,

“I need you to mean that.”

They again stare at each other, and they’re still touching, holding each other in just this minuscule way. 

Hilda says,

“When have you ever known me to lie?” Hilda rubs circles with her thumb over Zelda’s forearm, and Zelda shivers and then laughs as she says,

“You lie all the time. If you were truthful at all, you would wear clothes that show how beautiful you are.”

Hilda knows Zelda’s deflecting and projecting, so she isn’t offended. She says,

“I’m beautiful regardless. Why shouldn’t I be comfortable?”

“That’s all good and well until you’re the First Lady of the Church of Lilith,” Zelda says. Hilda opens her mouth for a feminist rant about what Lilith stands for, but Zelda continues, “I’m not asking you to change. I’m asking you to be by my side. And to occasionally wear something more flattering as you do so.”

Hilda wants to protest and fight, if only to be contrary enough to get them out of whatever the thing is they’re heading towards, to slow the progression of it so it doesn’t have to run headlong into some disaster that will result in hatred for a while, one way or another. They’ve been so pleasant to each and for each other lately; it’d be a shame to ruin it, one way or another. 

But she also wants to savor the fact that Zelda wants her to be her partner and helpmeet in something she believes in. She also wants to savor the fact that Zelda is talking about this with actual, tangible, accessible words rather than glances and feelings and impressions and innuendos and vague side comments and Cain-pit episodes. So Hilda says unthinkingly,

“And what do you find flattering on me?”

Zelda’s eyes flit closed and then back open and then pointedly away from Hilda. 

So it’s this again, Hilda thinks, already halfway to riling herself up about it. She had thought they’d had a tacit agreement to ignore—

But Hilda realizes she’s brought it on herself, encouraged it with her thoughtless words and actions. And her words had had to come from somewhere, some thought inside herself. There’s a part of her that doesn’t want to know, but the part of her that wants to prove herself right had come out on top and had goaded. And the part of herself that desires Zelda—that suppressed little slutty idiot of an entity—had cheered.

Zelda, meanwhile, has collected herself. She looks at Hilda now, tender and pained and thoughtful, and a shadow crosses her face, and she’s resolute. She says,

“I could tailor something for you.”

Hilda is the kitchen witch. She knows herbs and vegetables and homemaking. She makes a lot of clothes. But Zelda, to her credit, also has a knack for measurements and can take in a hem or alter an inseam like nobody’s business. Zelda falters slightly then continues,

“Something of your choosing.”

Now Hilda falters at that. She’s always had her own choice. She’s always been just on the fringes of the realm of enforced roles because of her obstinance and insistence and calculatedly ready obsequiousness to things that don’t matter to her but very much matter to others, and therefore the illusion of blind obedience. 

And it suddenly makes a lot of terrible sense to her. Zelda is being so careful to gain her consent, to make sure she is on board and comfortable and cognizant, and Hilda wants to cry about it anew and now not just because her sister had been so wronged. Not only had Zelda had that taken from her, been forced into acting and dressing a certain way, forced into doing who knows what because she won’t process it (or if she has it hasn’t been with Hilda), but also here Hilda is taking her kindness and thoughtfulness that she’s offering in direct response to her own awful experience and getting drunk on it, feeling things she oughtn’t feel and probably just imagining that Zelda’s feeling the same things.

“I’d rather you chose,” Hilda says. And she means it. She means it for herself—she knows Zelda, when given the opportunity to dress her, does so competently and conscientiously—but also for Zelda, to give her power over something that, for whatever reason, means something to her.

“You’re just saying that to indulge me,” Zelda says.

“And what if I am? I like indulging you.” Hilda says. But that had been the wrong thing to say, she realizes, as Zelda pulls out of her grip and sits defeatedly on the edge of her own bed.

“You shouldn’t have to, though,” Zelda says.

“That’s not what I said.”

“But it’s what you meant. Forget I said anything. Good night.” She reaches for the lamp, but Hilda charms it so it won’t extinguish, says,

“Please talk to me another minute.” 

Zelda huffs and climbs beneath her duvet. Hilda arranges her thoughts, aligns her words, prepares to apologize and comfort and reassure, but before she gets the chance, Zelda’s talking, and her voice is hard and cold and quick:

“It was stupid of me to ask you to—I’m satisfied with everything you do for me already. I shouldn’t ask too much. I chose this burden. You didn’t. And it was especially stupid of me to use such—such loaded terminology. Of course, you are always my first choice to perform all the sundry duties involved, but the implication—I should have had better judgment on the matter, and I—I think I’m finished talking about it. So if you’ll kindly uncharm the lamp.”

Hilda listens and digests and then laughs internally: They’re thinking on parallel tracks with different roadblocks to get caught up on. They’re thinking in circles within themselves and circling each other tangentially. It’s an old refrain for them—the one apologizing for something the other hadn’t found offensive and both getting upset with each other about something else entirely. On second thought, or fifteenth thought, or hundredth thought, Hilda decides she hasn’t been imagining Zelda’s secretly feeling the same way. She doesn’t uncharm the lamp.

“Zelds,” Hilda says softly. “I don’t want to push you. But I want to talk about it.”

Zelda had been staring straight, focusing her gaze on the far wall. But now she turns her head and looks at Hilda, pauses, says,

“Which ‘it’?” Her eyes are suspicious, fearful, a little wet. Hilda takes that to mean if she brings up any Caligari-adjacent topics, their conversation will end. That’s Zelda’s private pain. That’s her right. But Hilda can’t help but think that what she actually wants to talk about is harder. Not because it’s more painful or violating but because it’s more long-standing and ambiguous. An unspoken and hidden attraction is benign in itself. But the way it’s so often manifested itself and then gone into remission in favor of tense hostility, a razor’s edge of emotion, is less benign. They’ve always come out ok. But perhaps they’d be more than just ok if they addressed it. Hilda proceeds cautiously,

“Do you remember when I had that brain fever in 1897?”

“It was 1896, but yes. Why?” Zelda’s eyes are more suspicious but less fearful, less wet.

“We were living in a pretty little cottage in Whitby.”

“I told you I remembered. What of it?” Hilda swallows. She’s strong enough to address it, even if it’s one-sided, although she very much believes it isn’t.

“One night, I think you thought I still had the brain fever, but I didn’t. But regardless, you left the next week, and I didn’t see you for ten years.” Zelda clears her throat, blinks, says,

“I recall.”

“Why did you leave?” Hilda says. She expects a pause, some contemplation, at the very least a flutter of eyelashes. She receives instead a quick, firm response:

“It was a result of your illness. It wasn’t real. And I couldn’t bear that.”

“You couldn’t bear that I kissed you? Or you couldn’t bear that it wasn’t real?”

“Please let me turn off the lamp.”

Hilda allows that. It’s dark and heavy with the darkness.

“You didn’t answer my question,” Hilda says.

“It’s too much to ask of you,” Zelda says.

They’re again talking around each other. But Hilda laughs out loud this time.

“That’s rich,” Hilda says. “Loving you is like dancing the fucking bunny hop. How many times must I hop toward you before you believe me?”

“Excuse me?!” Zelda says. “I’m supposed to believe that a woman recently recovered from a serious neurological malady is putting her tongue in her sister’s mouth because she genuinely wants to rather than out of over-exuberant gratitude? I’m supposed to believe that a pathologically empathetic woman agrees to essentially be her sister’s wife because she genuinely wants to rather than because that sister has recently incurred severe psychological trauma? Excuse me for not believing any of that. Excuse me for denying my own horrible urges because I respect and value you. Excuse me for being sane.”

“But what would you like to believe?” Hilda says.

There’s a long silence in the very dark dark.

“What I would like to believe is irrelevant,” Zelda says. “I’m more interested in the actual facts.”

“And in actual fact, I did kiss you in 1896 because I wanted to. And just ten minutes ago I agreed to essentially being your wife because I wanted to.” Hilda is vibrating with the nervous energy of telling the absolute truth. Her heart pounds, and her hands twitch. There is a long pause in the silent dark before Zelda says,

“Oh.”

It's not the response Hilda had wanted or expected. But it is a response, and a telling one at that. Hilda says,

“Would you like me to prove it?”

“Only if you would like to prove it,” Zelda says.

Hilda slips out of her own bed and into Zelda’s.

“I would,” Hilda says.

They lie on their sides staring at each other in the darkness, contemplating each other in the darkness of their own minds. Zelda says,

“But you don’t—” she cuts herself off. Hilda brings a hand up to cup Zelda’s face, says,

“But I do.”

And Hilda understands fully now. They both have thought the same things, felt the same feelings, had the same reservations.

Hilda kisses her, the same way she had in 1897 or rather 1896. It’s not chaste or sisterly. It’s tongues and heat and promises.

They kiss. And they kiss. And they kiss again. Zelda pulls back, says,

“You can’t mean—”

“Obviously I do mean,” Hilda says as she pounces, again claiming Zelda’s mouth.

They continue. Kissing and kissing.

But after a while, Zelda disentangles herself, says,

“This is nice. But we both know.”

Zelda isn’t trying to be condescending. She’s trying to be considerate. But Hilda is so worked up and so observant. 

“Fuck me,” Hilda says.

“You’re saying that as an interjection.”

“No,” Hilda says. “I’m saying that as an imperative.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I had thought this was a one-shot. I was wrong.

It’s been a month or so. The ribbon cutting has come and gone. The Beltane has come and gone. 

And that had certainly been something. Hilda had gotten a little too drunk to remember quite what had occurred, but she’d woken up with flower petals in a lot of bizarre locations and just a ton of soot all over her naked body. Zelda had already vacated their spot under a weeping willow to keep rumors from starting when everyone sobered up and might remember catching a glimpse of them together. She’d apologized later for leaving her alone and naked in a very not alone but very naked way.

Anyway, Zelda is the High Priestess of the Church of Lilith. She delivers empowering, uplifting sermons that are tinged with a sadness for the necessary but still jarring loss of their old master who had never been who they thought he was. She kisses a lot of babies, shakes a lot of hands, networks with other covens on the down low.

Hilda is the First Lady of the Church of Lilith. She wears flattering outfits and ostentatious hats. She amens. She does a lot of administrative work, as well. And she’s the entirety of the hospitality committee. Those are the things the congregation sees and appreciates about her. Everyone had figured on as much, hadn’t been surprised in the least that she has a special chair near the pulpit and everything.

But now that the novelty of the new turn their relationship has taken has rubbed off a tad, it feels kind of weird to Hilda to be so revered by everybody, especially Zelda. It’s not that she doesn’t like it. It’s just very different. Maybe she just hasn’t grown into it. She doubts there’s a manual she can reference for this situation. 

“You, Too, Can Have It All: How to Be the Second in Command of a New Church Devoted to the Demon You Aided in Usurping Satan While Also Secretly Fucking Your Sister, Who Is the High Priestess of Said Church”

What insane person would’ve even written that self-help book? Her. She’s that insane person. She’s writing it currently, except it’s just her confused ramblings in one of Sabrina’s old diaries she’d never used—the kind that has a glittery plastic cover and a chintzy lock—she keeps hidden behind the lawn mower.

Needless to say, she’s just a little overwhelmed, and she can feel her nerves rankling and her mood slipping, and she’s worried she’s going to ruin something. This is how it always feels when she’s about to ruin something. Except Zelda won’t be able to leave for ten years; she’s got a church to run. It’ll have to be Hilda who leaves, and she’s not looking forward to that.

They’ve got to cool it or have a few discussions. But what to even say? What to even start with? There’s no manual for that either.

“So Your Entire Belief System Has Been Upended and Your Sister Might Tire of Fucking You and Kill You at Any Moment: Five Essentials for Surviving (and Thriving!) after a Circumvented Apocalypse”

She deliberately picks a supper recipe that calls for red wine so she’ll have an excuse to dip into it.

xxx

_Zelda’s a redhead._

_She can therefore wear a lot of horrible colors and still look fantastic. A lot of browns and greens that a blonde like Hilda could never touch with a ten-foot pole._

_Shimmering taupe is especially egregious to Hilda._

_Because Zelda looks especially radiant, and Hilda knows for absolute fact she could die, go to Hell, resurrect as a completely new person, and still not be able to look half as good in such a thing._

_But there’s something off about it, too._

_Zelda would never pick it for herself—it’s too bright and too floral and too low cut. It has very obviously been picked by someone who’s looking at her a certain way. A certain way that Hilda should not be looking but can’t help but look. She looks a little more at exposed collarbones and glowing skin, and then she shrugs off the thought, refocuses herself._

_She refocuses herself until Zelda says in an alarmingly saccharine way,_

_“Sugar?” as she’s pouring tea. Zelda does not pour tea, does not care what people like in their tea._

_Zelda likes black coffee and has it poured for her._

_Hilda is alerted to many things, and still that dress is so becoming._

xxx

Hilda is rummaging through a seldom-used closet to find her good luggage. She might as well have it handy in case she needs to skip town for a while.

She thinks she’ll take the train. Trains are so romantic, and she’ll be doing a lot of crying, so she’ll want an extra romantic place to be for that.

The search abruptly stops. Because instead she finds that dress.

xxx

Zelda comes home late. She’s been counseling someone about some magic dysfunction he’d been experiencing. She’d told Hilda about it after Hilda had noticed she’d been brooding. Hilda had claimed pastoral confidentiality didn’t count because anything she said to Hilda fell under marital confidentiality. (She’d just watched Witness for the Prosecution and also is a total snoop.) Zelda had laughed and said one of the main plot points of Witness for the Prosecution is that Marlene Dietrich and Tyrone Power are not really married, just like them. But she’d told Hilda anyway, and they’d figured together that his problems were psychological, ptsd probably from all that had recently happened, especially his having been briefly dead. They’d looked at each other for a long time after that had tumbled out of Hilda’s mouth and then started talking about potential choir specials.

Zelda walks into their bedroom to find that dress hanging at Hilda’s vanity and Hilda pacing. Hilda doesn’t stop pacing, doesn’t even look at her, just says in a rush,

“Why in hell’s name did you keep this thing?”

Zelda sits on the edge of her own bed, takes off her shoes, sighs,

“Can we talk about it later, please?”

“When is later? Some nebulous point in the future after we’ve run ourselves into the ground with grief and impulsivity and don’t even remember why we’re absolutely bonkers anymore? Some obscure day when the lust has all dried up and we’ve forgotten how to love each other any other way and now hate’s the only thing we have left?”

“Have you been drinking?” Zelda says quietly, evenly. Hilda stops pacing, glares, rips the dress off the hanger, and throws it at Zelda.

“Why did you keep this?!” Zelda places the dress next to her on the bed, takes a breath. But her face is so red already. Her eyes are so angry already.

“I remember everything that happened under that spell. Everything. And one thing that has kept me any semblance of sane is remembering how you looked at me when I wore it.” She stands up, stands in front of Hilda rather menacingly. “You wanted to fuck me in that dress. It was so plain and so obscene on your face. And even though you desired me, you didn’t let it distract you. You knew something was wrong, and you helped me because you love me.” She takes a step closer but doesn’t touch her; her eyes don’t lose any fierceness, her body any tension. “The part of me that was me in that automaton, sex-dolled-up body knew that you were the only person who has ever done that for me. Put aside her own feelings because my feelings were important to her. 

“I kept it because it reminds me of the moment I knew I was completely in love with you. And that I got out of that not because I did anything but that you did. Because you love me. I kept it to remember the moment that I knew I didn’t care whether you loved me the same way—if I escaped my prison, I would devote myself to you in any way you would let me and always keep you near me and cherish you and never murder you again. But I swear, Hildie, if you make me talk anymore about this fucking dress, I might just break that last promise.”

Hilda is speechless. She hadn’t known what to expect for an answer—some self-loathing masochism had been her suspicion. But this. This absolute emotional nudity has thrown her. And she’s reconsidering some things. Maybe this won’t spiral into a garbage fire within six months and she won’t have to find her good luggage to start a new life in Colorado Springs or where the fuck ever a train might take her. 

All that reverence that had been making her uncomfortable is clicking into place. Zelda doesn’t treat her differently because they’re banging. They’re banging because Zelda’s treating her differently. And Zelda’s treating her differently because she’s being honest with herself. It’s a lot to take in. So she puts the thoughts in her pocket. She needs to take them out later and examine them more closely. For now, though, she needs to show Zelda she has no intention of ever mentioning that dress again.

Hilda grabs Zelda’s hair with one hand and her neck with the other and kisses her, so hard and fast and passionately that Zelda stumbles into her and has to catch herself by grabbing Hilda’s hips, but that sets Hilda off balance, and she falls back into the vanity. Zelda’s attached to her, though, by her hungry mouth and her grasping hands, and instead of just bumping into the thing, she’s being pushed on top of it. One of Zelda’s hands moves to her face. It’s gentle but firm. Zelda pulls away from kissing her but continues pressing their bodies together.

“Do you understand now?” Zelda whispers.

“Yes.” Hilda kisses her again, even more frenzied. It had been a lie. She doesn’t understand. She doesn’t understand everything Zelda’s thinking or feeling or has been through. She doesn’t understand her own thoughts or feelings very well or all the stuff she’s been through, either. But she understands better. There’s no such thing as perfect understanding. It’s less of a lie when she puts it to herself that way.

Zelda’s fingers trace Hilda’s cheekbone, down her jaw, ghost over her neck, and clench around her collar. She pulls Hilda up with both hands, still kissing her. They shuffle together toward Hilda’s bed, and Zelda begins unbuttoning Hilda’s cardigan. Hilda breaks off the kiss this time, says,

“You’re sure you want this? After thinking about—that?”

“I want it, and moreover, I need it.”

“Oh, love,” Hilda says against Zelda’s mouth, and she kisses her again, soft this time. Soft and slow. Zelda embraces her now, arms tight around her back. They kiss for a long time, holding each other as close as they can, Hilda’s fingers running through Zelda’s hair, and Zelda’s hands rubbing circles over Hilda’s shoulder blades before Zelda says,

“Enough sappy horseshit. Strip.” Her voice is hoarse with the tears Hilda had felt and tasted her fighting. But she’s already working on her garters while Hilda throws off her cardigan, steps out of her skirt. Zelda turns so Hilda can unzip her, and Hilda kisses her neck as she does so.

They’re nude, just standing looking at each other for a moment. Zelda’s eyes start at Hilda’s face and descend, pause, descend, pause, ascend again. 

“To think I could’ve had access to this since 1896. I’m a fool.”

“I don’t think I was in the mental space in 1896 to just let you stare at my naked body in full lighting. Our academy days were a little too fresh at that point.” Zelda grimaces. But then she laughs.

“You’re right. I don’t think you’d even have let me slide into home plate in 1896. We’d have probably fooled around a little and then you would have left instead of me.” Hilda considers as she pulls back her linens.

“Hmm. Maybe. I’d definitely have allowed second base, though. That brain fever did a number on my erogenous zones.” She edges into bed. “To this day, I can’t even look at crinoline without getting aroused.”

Zelda laughs as she follows. They’re lying on their sides, close but not yet touching. She says,

“I wore a lot of crinolines back then.”

“And don’t I know it,” Hilda says. She takes one of Zelda’s hands and and brings it to her lips. She kisses each fingertip and then drags her tongue down her index finger into her palm, where she kisses again, and then drags her tongue down to her wrist, laves the tendons and veins. Zelda gasps.

“If you’d promised to do this to me in that dress, I would’ve gladly worn it every day,” Zelda husks.

“I don’t want to talk about that dress.” She kisses Zelda’s wrist again. “I don’t want to talk too much at all, in fact.” She kisses Zelda’s inner forearm up to the crux of her elbow and then bites her on the bicep. Not hard. Just firm teeth and gentle sucking. They both moan. She releases and looks into Zelda’s eyes. “You think too much when I go down on you. Perhaps you’d rather something else tonight?”

“I trust you. I want you to do whatever you want with me.” Hilda doesn’t have the vocabulary to express how much that means to her, so she skims her hand down to Zelda’s hip and encourages her leg with light prodding to drape over her own. She kisses her, and they grind together, work each other into a lather with unconscious thrusts of tongue and hips, wet and hot. And then Hilda pushes and pulls at her shoulders. Zelda’s on top of her fully now, and Hilda slips her hand between Zelda’s legs. A finger circles her clit, and Zelda bucks. 

“I want to do with you only what you want to be done,” Hilda whispers, still circling. Zelda’s hands fly to Hilda’s tits, squeeze as her eyes close and she says,

“Fuck! I want you inside me. Immediately.”

Hilda doesn’t need to be told twice.

Zelda controls the rhythm, and it’s slow and hard at first. She pounds herself down onto Hilda even as she’s delicately stroking Hilda’s nipples. But then she moans and pinches and listens to Hilda’s answering moan as she says,

“More.”

Hilda adds another finger, but she doesn’t need to thrust harder. Zelda does that herself. Her eyes open and look into Hilda’s. Zelda pants,

“I don’t deserve you.” Hilda is rigid under Zelda’s ministrations, straining for contact, Zelda’s fingers on her breasts, Zelda’s pubic bone occasionally brushing against her clit as she fucks herself on Hilda’s fingers, Hilda’s other hand clawing into Zelda’s ass. Hilda’s halfway to ecstasy just watching Zelda’s face contort in pleasure. But still she says,

“I’m a fucking catch and a half. No one deserves me. You’re not special.” She adds another finger, presses her thumb to Zelda’s clit.

Zelda’s wild above her, totally abandoned, jutting her hips faster and faster.

“You’re so fucking right it hurts,” Zelda says, and soon after she comes, going taut and shuddering and clenching her teeth and groaning. She trembles and collapses onto Hilda.

They lie together as Zelda’s breathing becomes less ragged.

“I’m special exclusively because you love me,” Zelda whispers into Hilda’s ear.

“Enough sappy horseshit. Get your head between my legs immediately.”

Zelda does so. Enthusiastically.

Zelda’s tongue is so reverent. Hilda enjoys being worshipped for a few minutes, and then she pulls Zelda’s hair. Their eyes meet. Hilda says,

“Fuck me like you mean it.”

Zelda’s tongue is irreverent, bold, brazen. Claiming. 

Hilda thinks she won’t have to skip town after all. She might pass out, however.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Together-as-sisters tumblr prompt: smut involving that dress  
> But of course I am I and fulfill prompts obliquely.


End file.
